Good afternoon and welcome to HotCopper’s the ASX Today for Wednesday of Week 36 of the year, I’m Jonathon Davidson. With the bulk of earnings season wrapped up both at home and in the States, ebullience has faded, bringing the XJO back down below 9,000pts.
Not helping matters: fresh strikes in the Middle East exchanged between US and Iran in the last few days pushing up oil prices, implying inflation, but it’s not just the Middle East markets are reacting to.
With growing concerns around inflation, rate hikes, and $40 trillion dollar national debt in the greenback, investors are selling off US bonds even after the White House has made a range of interventionary measures in recent history. Worth remembering is that Australia’s debt last week hit $1 trillion for the first time.
At home, the market opened down more than a percent after a red night for Wall Street reacting to the aforementioned, at the time of writing US futures are more or less flat.
At home, the telecomms sector was ahead as Telstra jumped over 2% on Wednesday, and Woodside jumped over a percent as brent crude prices climbed above $95 for the umpteenth time in recent memory. Still, the energy sector wasn’t able to flip green and most sectors were red.
Perhaps the most exciting thing to happen in smallcaps today, Kaoko Metals, spearheading the Chalkos copper project in Namibia, was hit with a speeding ticket after it jumped some +140% in a day to $1.80 a share after closing at around 70cents on Tuesday.
That’s the ASX Today for Wednesday of Week 36, I’m Jonathon Davidson, have a great afternoon if you’re down at Africa Down Under, and we’ll see you tomorrow.
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